After January’s turmoil, February’s been relatively calm. As mentioned last month, as a positive note, the surviving platforms have made efforts throughout this month (and hopefully this new attitude will continue over time) to show signs of transparency, offering more information about their internal processes and they way they operate: Monethera, TFG Crowd, DoFinance, Grupeer, Viventor, Crowdestor, Peerberry…

From now on, I will remain particularly alert with the P2B platforms of similar profile to Kuetzal and Envestio; that is, very young platforms, with very high interests, headquarters in the Baltic countries and suspiciously punctual payments. I’m talking about Monethera, Wisefund and TFG Crowd. Particularly the first, has started to show very suspicious signs. I’m not too exposed in any of them (0.4-0.5% of my portfolio in each). I’m not going to increase my positions. Nor to decrease them – especially because they have disabled the option to sell shares. All we can do now is to cross our fingers, wait and see how things evolve.

I take this opportunity to clarify that my investment strategy, investing in 40 platforms, is mainly due to my blogger profile: I aim to test all main platforms so that I can analyze and compare them after investing in them. If I were an anonymous investor, I would limit myself to about ten platforms maximum.

In February, my investments have had a 6.9% monthly return (annualized) compared to the January debacle (-5.3%, thanks to Envestio). Low returns overall on all three types of platforms (partly because February is a shorter month): P2B Crowdlending platforms (8.0% vs. -97.9% last month), P2P Crowdlending platforms (10.3% vs. 13.0% last month), and Real Estate Crowdfunding platforms (4.7% vs. 4.2%).

The drop observed in P2P platforms is mainly due to the conversion between the ruble and the euro (-4.0%), which has plummeted, affecting the return rates of my two platforms with exposure to the ruble: Twino and Mintos. And a lot has to change so that history doesn’t repeat itself in March, given that the downward trend has continued during the first week of the month.

Almost identical patterns observed for the Mexican peso (-4.0%), South African rand (-5.0%), and, to a lesser extent, Sterling pound (-2.4%). Only Kazakh tenge (-0.1%) has kept its value when compared to the Euro.

 

 
Table of Contents

Portfolio Summary

The main news of the month are:

• I’ve opened an account in Iuvo, my 39th platform;
• I’m still second on the list of top-20 P2P Portfolios in terms of the invested amount (and first in terms of number of platforms). Besides, they’ve just included my blog in the list of Top 100 Peer-to-peer Lending Blogs (#49 position). Back to second place in the passive income “race” after the Envestio debacle.
• This month’s disappointment is Monethera: problems with bank accounts, income and withdrawals, and little communication;
• As a positive surprise, Bulkestate. Apart from the record returns in February (18.9%), the XIRR of the platform, with 8.7% has finally reached the values of similar real estate platforms (EstateGuru and CrowdEstate)… and with zero defaults after two years using it;
• ¡P2P Conference in Riga announced for June 2020! A unique 2-day event combining conference, exhibition, networking, and fun. Europe’s Fintech elite meets for the second time to listen to and discuss with international speakers, extend their network and enjoy some incredibly good food and drinks in three handpicked locations. The event will take place in Riga, Latvia on June 19-20, 2020.
• I continue with my divestment on platforms that I’m not completely convinced about (Fellow Finance and Finbee), real estate in Spain (Housers, Inveslar and Privalore) and over-represented (Fast Invest). I have also stopped investing in new projects on the three most risky platforms (in my opinion): Monethera, Wisefund and TFG Crowd
• I have increased my positions mainly on the platforms that inspire me more confidence: Estateguru, EVOEstate and CrowdEstate. In the coming days I plan to also increase my positions at Linked Finance and Mintos.
• The best platforms in terms of XIRR are 1) real estate: Bricks & People (now operating through the SociosInversores.com platform) and CrowdEstate; 2) P2B: Wisefund and TFG Crowd; and 3) P2P: Finbee, Twino and Grupeer.
• The best monthly returns were 1) real estate: Bulkestate and CrowdEstate; 2) P2B: Wisefund and Monethera; and 3) P2P: LenderMarket, Viventor and Fast Invest.
• To compare all platforms, check my Comparator.

1. All interests are calculated before deducting taxes.
2. For Mintos, I present the combined returns (all currencies, taking into account the exchange rate), as well as the return rate separately for each currency (without applying the exchange rate).
3. The yellow shading shows that the returns will surely end up being lower because there are unpaid or delayed projects without a final decision.
4. Gray figures for platforms that are still too fresh in my wallet to give a realistic idea of the ​​XIRR.
5. In Italic platforms on which I have not been invested for too long, so they have not yet reached their full potential.

Delays and defaults

• In CrowdEstate the number of delayed projects rises from 10 to 15 (27%). In some cases there are different sections of the same project (before you stopped investing in multiple tranches).
• Flender 9.0% of delays and 1.7% defaults.
• The situation in Estateguru 4.5% reduction stake and 3.0% defaults. On a positive note, Estateguru is showing very effective when it comes to charging them little by little: there are already 10 recovered (1 plus this month)…
• The situation in Housers the situation is worsened by the stagnation of the housing market in Spain. There are already 36% of projects delayed.
• Linked Finance 0.4% delays and 2.8% defaults.
• The delays and defaults of Finbee are within the expected, being a platform without Buyback. And Fellow Finance a disaster… Luckily I didn’t invest too much.
• To compare all platforms, check my Comparator.

*Variation in the number of active projects from last month; I only include platforms without Buyback; Green if the parameters (delays and defaults) have improved compared to last month and red if they have worsened.

Real Estate Crowdfunding:

Bit of Property

Bit of Propertyis a real estate investment platform where one can invest in properties from 50 Euro. The company is headquartered in Singapore and has a subsidiary in Estonia. Investing in properties is similar to buying stocks and shares in companies. The investor receives a share in the property and, as the beneficial owner, will receive rental income directly on his/her account (on a monthly basis). In addition, once the property is sold, investors will exit the property at market value along with any capital gains or losses. There is also a relatively active secondary market where you can quickly invest in all previous projects, but also selling them, thus providing some degree of liquidity.

Since December 2019, I have invested in the 3 projects offered (one with two tiers). It’s easy to buy at a discount (49 EUR instead of 50 EUR). I had some minor issues when opening the platform that were resolved very quickly and efficiently. In January and February, the platform did not offer any new projects, but there is one announced for March.

Brickowner

In Brickowner, since all the investments are long-term and paid in full at the end of the project, my profitability remains at zero (since I started operating with the platform in May 2018). Two projects delayed since April.

You can read the profile card of Brickowner here. When you sign up, you’ll receive $50 within 30 days of an investment being funded if you use this LINK.

Brickstarter

Bricktarter is a Spanish platform that invests mostly in Andalusia, in properties for touristic rentals. Their projects are also often offered through EVOEstate.

I opened my account with them in August 2019 and have invested in seven projects. Return rates are slowly increasing, and February’s monthly return was already 6.9%.

In February, Brickstarter announced that they are about to launch a secondary market, which during the first weeks, will be available only for beta testers.

Also in February, Brickstarter moved to Estonia. Since 1 January, they will no longer withhold taxes to non-residents, due to the double tax agreement between Spain and Estonia. You need to make sure your address is set up correctly in your profile. Taxes withheld to non-residents in 2019 will be paid back to investors shortly. Withheld taxes in 2019 and paid in 2020, will be considered as 2020 interests.

Investors who use the code BRICKS during registration with this LINKwill get 15 EUR extra for investing and 0.5% cashback during 90 days. The code is valid until further notice.

BulkEstate

In Bulkestate, as all long-term investments are all and paid in full at the completion of the project, I had no returns until December 2018, when the first two finished. The returns offered are excellent (14.4% obtained from already completed projects) and historically there is 0% default rate, so my strategy is to keep investing in all new projects (which unfortunately aren’t that many).

Apart from the excellent monthly returns in February (18.9%), the XIRR of the platform, with 8.7%, has finally reached the values of similar real estate platforms (EstateGuru and CrowdEstate)… and with zero defaults after two years.

As of today, I have invested in 55 projects, 31 of them already completed. In February, it was announced that the owner of the borrower company of the “Saraiķi” project (due in February 2020) sadly passed away at the end of 2019. The legal procedures for the inheritance will likely delay the payment process.

In February, Bulkestate has completely revamped the interface, adding several really useful tools and graphics:

• Tax reports: A tool to create an overview of your income, investments, interest and withdrawals for any time period.
• Investment Summary: Displays a detailed description of your active and past investments.
• Repayment schedule: Easy to track and export planned repayments.
• Investment Planner: to calculate the potential profit according to Bulkestate’s average interest rate.

You can read the technical sheet of Bulkestate here.

CrowdEstate

I invest with CrowdEstate March 2018 (102 projects in total). Until August 2019, all projects were being paid on time. From all payments being up to date, there were suddenly 9 delayed projects in August. In February, it’s 15. Some are different tiers of the same project (before you stopped investing in multiple tiers). Worrying, but lets wait and see how they resolve.

After the October peak due to the completion of several projects, monthly return rates returned to their usual values. The net annual yield offered by CrowdEstate, considering only my already reimbursed projects (51) is 13.8%.

My strategy is to continue investing in each new project, except for those financed in several tiers (“Multiple investing rounds”), as I believe it goes against my principles of diversification.

In March, CrowdEstate communicated about the following news:

• Good Practices: Crowdestate has been recognized as a trusted crowdfunding platform and honoured with Best practices” certificate issued by FinanceEstonia.
• Improved statistics page: new data about marketplace trading and investors, you can also download the annual reports.
• Updated terms and conditions: the information published on the Crowdestate platform is protected by copyright.

CrowdEstate in figures (March 2020): 45,900 investors, 226 projects worth 89 million and an average return rate of 17.2%.

You can read the technical sheet of CrowdEstate here.

Estateguru

In EstateGuru, the monthly return obtained seems to follow an upward line since I started investing in the platform in March 2018. Really satisfied. Estateguru remains a tremendously active platform. I have already participated in 627 projects, of which 254 have already been completed. The situation remains more or less stable in terms of delays and defaults, 4.5% and 3.0%, respectively. In addition, Estateguru is proving very effective when it comes to recovering them one by one: already 10 recovered projects (1 this month).

In January, in view of all this, I have decided to double my investment per project from now on (from 50 to 100 EUR). My strategy remains to invest in each new project, except those that are financed in several tiers (in these, I only invest in one of the tiers, usually the first).

EstateGuru in numbers (March 2020): 1322 loans issued in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Spain and Portugal worth EUR 192 million; 44,000 investors from different profiles from 106 countries.

You can read the technical sheet of EstateGuru here. When registering, you will receive 1% cashback of the amount invested during the first month and 0.5% the two following months with thisLINK.

EVOEstate

I started investing in EVOEstate in August. EVOEstate allows to invest in projects from real estate platforms across Europe, including several of the ones I already used: Brickstarter, Reinvest24, Inveslar, Housers, Bulkestate and Crowdestor. I use EVOEstate only to diversify into other platforms without having to open a new account. EVOEstate invests its own funds (“skin in the game”) in some of the loans, which are obviously the most recommended. So far, the platform has offered projects in 10 countries (including the United States), 6 to 60 months and with annual returns between 6 and 16%.

I have already invested in 63 projects (4 already completed), both in the primary and secondary markets, i.e. a volume of 8 loans per month, which implies excellent possibilities to quickly diversify. Basically, my strategy is to invest around 100 EUR in each project, except those from platforms on which I am already registered.

You can read my review/technical sheet of EvoEstate here. Register with thisLINK and you will receive 0.5% of the amount invested during the first six months.

Housers

My position at Housers, my first platform (September 2016), is widely overrepresented: 32% of all my crowd investments and 206 projects (65 completed). So since August, I have changed my strategy: reduce my investments to 100 euros per project, and sell fractions of some projects (especially fixed-rate) in the secondary market to progressively reduce my positions.

The situation of Housers in terms of delays is frankly disastrous (36%) because of the cooling of the real estate market in Spain, especially in large cities such as Madrid, where Housers offers more than half of the projects. Some of the fixed-rate projects with defaults have agreed on new payment schedules that include late interest and several have already resumed monthly payments. Virtually all of the savings or investment projects, which used to be paid even months ahead of schedule, are now experiencing systematic delays.

After two years operating in the Portuguese market with a provisional license, Housers announced in February that they have obtained authorization from the Securities and Exchange Commission (CMVM) of Portugal, thus becoming the first international company registered as a Participatory Financing Platform (PFP) in Portugal.

In January, the platform launchedHousers Corporate, a new line of business dedicated to the financing of business projects. The first project was the completion of version 1.0 of the Housers App, as well as the development of version 2.0, and the financing of the advertising campaign and promotion of the application in its two versions.

Housers in figures (February): projects in four countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal and Poland), 117,000 registered users from 155 different countries, 111 million EUR invested, and over 39 million EUR between yields and returns of principal.

You can read the technical sheet for Housers here. Register with thisLINK and you will receive 25 EUR Gift after making an initial investment of at least 50 EUR.

Inveslar

In Inveslar, since December 2016, I have invested in 34 projects (10 already completed). For a few months now, most of them have also been marketed through EVOEstate.

The return rates are fluctuating greatly lately, as shown by the graphic, once projects started finalizing.

In January, Inveslar reached 50 projects funded.

In February, Inveslar announced the signing of a collaboration agreement with a coliving agency. The coliving model offers the possibility of living in “prime” areas at an affordable price for of young workers and students of higher education. It offers the tenants, through a “flat rate”, the opportunity to enjoy common areas with high quality equipment, weekly cleaning service, all supplies, an agency available 24/7, etc. This model appears in response to the substantial increase in rental prices, especially in the center of large cities, where on the other hand you find most of workplaces and educational centers. These types of projects will offer great returns in the Type-Fixed lending modality, where interest is paid monthly and capital amortization in the last installment.

You can read the Inveslar technical sheet here. Register with thisLINK and you will receive 25 EUR Gift after making an initial investment of at least 1000 EUR.

Privalore

Privalore confirmed in December 2019 what was already an open secret: that after 4 years offering direct crowdfunding campaigns, they have decided not to continue in the crowdfunding business for good. So all what’s left to do is to wait for the refund of my last three active investments (all delayed over a year) and goodbye to Privalore.

Reinvest24

Reinvest24 is a real estate crowdfunding platform, whose projects generate profits from both rent and capital gains when selling.

It’s too early to judge (I started investing in May 2019). Overall satisfied. Projects are carefully selected. I have only managed to invest in 5, which are financed very slowly (several months). To speed up the process, the latest projects are also being funded through EVOEstate. Some start generating profits from the moment of investment, before it is fully financed. There is no wide range of new projects, although the platform has already financed 13 in its short history with estimated returns between 11 and 15% (6 of them completed). Another drawback is the 2% commission charged when investing, so after all these months the returns are only marginally positive (0.3%).

Crowdlending P2B:

Crowdestor

In Crowdestor, since April 2019, I have already invested in 66 projects, with very variable returns between 10.0% and 20.7% and periods of 2 to 24 months. In general, they are financed fairly quickly, between a few hours and a week. At the moment payments are timely (perhaps too timely?) – neither delays nor defaults. I’m very satisfied. In fact, I regret not starting to invest earlier. Because of its growing popularity, some projects are funded within a few hours, which coupled with the lack of Autoinvest makes it easy to miss them if you’re not following up closely. Luckily, many projects are financed in several tiers, so there are often second chances to invest.

In January, in response to the recent shake of the P2P markets by the unfortunate Kuetzal and Envestio events, Crowdestor announced they’re taking a series of measures and has issued a statement to reassure customers of the legality of the platform. They are working on a detailed action/development plan to become more transparent, more open to investors, improve the standardization process, become more automated, etc. The action plan will be presented by the end of February, beginning of March 2020. The plan will include topics regarding:

• Transparency. To disclose as much information as possible in following areas: Borrowers. More financial information, info on management, contacts, registration documents.
• Partners. To show what partners they work on due diligence, legal, banks, KYC and all other possible partners.
• Team. To make it more public: on the website, with detailed CVs, experience and links to LinkedIn.
• Decision making. Presenting an understandable and transparent of the due diligence procedure.
• Technology. How to automate due diligence.
• Growth plan.
• Investors meeting. Through webinars with investors to answer their questions, plus Investors-Borrowers meetings in cities across Europe twice per year giving an opportunity for investors to meet Borrowers and Crowdestor face-to-face.
• Early exit option. In response to numerous such requests received, Crowdestor has agreed with several investors to consider to buy-out a part of other investors loans with a discount in projects. This will not be a buy-out made by Crowdestor, but by other investors, so with no profit for Crowdestor. Sounds like a secondary market, but the secondary market as such will take a bit longer.

EthicHub

EthicHub uses blockchain crowdlending technology to connect small producers in Mexico with no access to financial services, i.e. credit/loans, with investors. The difference with other crowdlending platforms is that EthicHub not only seeks profitability, but also aims to generate social impact in the Communities requesting loans. This social impact is generated since the loans have a lower interest for the farmers, so that they can get a greater margin when selling their coffee. Another important point is that EthicHub closes contracts with large companies and thus the repayment of loans by farmers is guaranteed. In exchange, investors get a 15% interest rate. EthicHub have received multiple prices along the way, both from economic and development institutions.

So far, EthicHub has financed more than 100 families of coffee-producing farmers in 5 communities through 49 loans (around EUR 5000 each), with 0% defaults. The loans are intended for pruning, clearing, treatment of plants, hiring of labor, collection, storage, export, etc. In return, the investor obtains a 15% return, in addition to the added value of knowing that the loans help these small communities in Mexico to develop the local economy in a sustainable way.

To be able to invest in the platform you will need to create or have a virtual wallet or wallet where your transactions will be carried out and reflected. You can create the wallet on the platform (what I did) or import it. The loans are for several months with principal payment plus interest at the end of the period (full bullet).

I have already invested in 9 projects that will still take several months to generate profits.

Flender

Flender confirmed last October its first two defaulted projects. We’ll have to wait (probably) quite a few more months before we know how they resolve. Flender has started legal activities to recover them (estimated at a 35% probability). In November, there were 7 delayed projects and 2 defaults (7.8 y 1.7%, respectively). The monthly returns, October disaster aside, range from 7 to 10%, with some peaks for really generous punctual promotions.

Flender in numbers (December 2019): More than €12.5 million invested in 2019 for a historical total of €18m.

You can read the Flender technical sheet here. Register with thisLINK and you will receive 0.5% of the amount invested during the first 30 days.

Linked Finance

The Irish platform is the most active by far of all P2B platforms I use (with the Autoinvest I manage to invest in 25 new projects per month on average). The monthly returns are really regular, around 8%.

Linked Finance is one of my favorite platforms. 18 defaults (out of 630 projects) and 2 delays. My intention is to continue to invest in each new project. I invest the same amount on all loans, regardless of rating or duration. Since February, I have increased the investment per loan from 50 to 60 Euros.

Linked Finance in figures (February 2020): 129 million invested in 2,513 loans; 1.28% default rate; 24,400 users; average loan size in the last 6 months: EUR 80,700. You can read the platform’s whitepaper here.

Monethera

Monethera is a platform similar to Wisefund, TFG Crowd and Crowdestor in terms of the way it operates and profitability. Its projects focus on four main areas: real estate, business growth, organic agriculture and green energy, logistics and technologies. They market projects with very attractive returns (18-21%) 3-12 months in duration.

Since August 2019, I have invested in all but the first loan (20 in total). Projects are financed in a couple of weeks and payments are on time.

The collapse of Kuetzal and Envestio has affected Monethera in several ways:

• The buyback option, by which Monethera would buy back loans from investors with a 5% penalty, has been suspended temporarily to avoid all customers to request it at the same time. To compensate for this, in February, Monethera announced that they’ll launch a secondary market in late March.
• In January, Monethera published here some answers to the questions due to extra-scrutiny of their activities. It mostly relates to Richly Pacific International Limited, a Hong-Kong based company offering repayment guarantee for Monethera.
• And in February, Monethera has issued additional information on their internal processes in an exercise of transparency. You can read more here.

Despite these measures, investors seem to be very cautious and the latest projects are being financed more slowly. It seems that Monethera is having problems with banks, which is somewhat disturbing if we consider that Kuetzal had a similar evolution before confirming its collapse. On 5 February, Monethera temporarily suspended deposits due to problems with Unicredit. After temporarily switching to Paysera, on February 20, they announced they were also experiencing problems with Paysera and that all withdrawals (deposits and payments) from the 14th of February are still pending. There are new bank details from March 5 and Monethera announced that deposits and withdrawals will resume. I still am waiting for one, so let’s wait and see if they are true to his word. For the moment, as a result of these uncertainties, I have stopped investing in new projects and have withdrawn my non-invested funds.

The AutoInvest option was launched in February (read more here) . Also in February 2020, Monethera will update the statistics in the “About Us” section so that the tracking record for 2019 will be available for users.

Register with thisLINK and you will receive a bonus of 5 EUR plus 0.5% of the amount invested during the first 180 days.

October

The big problem of October are the 8 projects in the process of judicial recovery (3.7% of the total), together with 4 delays. Monthly returns continue to fluctuate greatly from month to month depending on when the delays and defaults are computed, and the return remains only marginally positive after so many months (0.2% XIRR), albeit in timid recovery. As a positive point, to clarify that, unlike other platforms, October provisions 100% of the amount (since judicial recovery processes take a long time and the result is insecure). Provisions are potential losses and some or all of the amount due may be recovered over time. All other platforms do not consider such losses until the judicial recovery process is complete.

Since an Autoinvest function does not exist, one has to be very alert not to miss new projects, which get funded quickly. It is very useful to have the October App installed on the mobile to be able to react faster.

In February, October announced its first German project, although German regulations do not yet allow private investors to lend to these projects.

In March, October reached 400 million euros borrowed. In just 5 years, private and institutional investors have financed with this amount more than 800 projects.

You can read the technical sheet of October here. Register with thisLINK and you will receive € 20 to lend on projects when investing at least 500 EUR.

TFG Crowd

TFG Crowd is a platform similar to Monethera, Wisefund and Crowdestor in terms of the way it operates and its return rates, but with different (and broader) geographic approach: United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. TFGcrowd has been involved in commercial financing since 2015, but the platform is still very young: 2019. In this short period, they have already financed 31 projects with very attractive returns (8-19%), 6-24 months, and very informative descriptions of the projects. Three are over. The most striking feature is that they offer buyback guarantee.

Since September, I have invested in 15 projects (1 already finalized). The payments are punctual and I have already reached an excellent 17.3% XIRR. My intention is to continue investing in each new project.null

In February, in response to the shakes in the P2P markets, TFGcrowd informed investors about upcoming changes in the near future (read more here). Frankly quite impressive. If only a couple of them end up taking shape, it will be a considerable improvement. To stress:

– Moving to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom (that is, opening a business there and request an FCA license for crowdfunding), where there is one more regulation strong in the P2P loan market.

– Migration of European projects to the German jurisdiction – Open also a Germany-based company (in view of Brexit) and also request a crowdfunding license, to complement the regulated company in the Kingdom United.

– Accounts IBG euro TFG and TFG VISA cards.

– Secondary market.

– AutoInvest function.

– Improvement of the bonus/referral program.

– Business accounts with tax benefits

– Open a branch in Dubai, where, since P2P loans are not allowed by local regulations, investors will be offered the possibility of Acquire shares in companies seeking to raise funds.

– Insurance market: they are currently developing an insurance option for replace the current TFGcrowd EXTRA Repurchase Guarantee (until 31 December 2020).

– Mobile app.

In February, TFGcrowd provided some additional information on how their Buyback Guarantee works:

– The 2% of each project financed through the platform goes to the Fund of Repurchase guarantee TFG (143,748 EUR in February). These funds are kept in a separate account, opened specifically for this purpose, to be used in case of default of any of the borrowers (more than 60 days late). In In case of default, TFGcrowd will ensure the refund of the nominal value of the outstanding loan plus accrued interest income. All the investors will be compensated proportionally to their investments in a particular project.

– Exist Additional guarantees that are not listed on the website: not all companies, especially the newest ones, they have enough assets that can serve as warranty. In those cases, TFGcrowd takes into account the personal solvency of the business owner or guarantor, your existing assets, such as assets Furniture and real estate. Being a third party guarantee, they cannot include it in the website, but the warranty agreement is signed by the relevant parties and There is the guarantee.

– TFGcrowd also invests its own funds in projects.

– Finally, The Finance Group Limited also invests in companies and projects. In such cases, The Finance Group Limited buys shares of the company corresponding or establishes a new fully owned company designed specifically for a particular project. This explains why Finance Group Limited or its subsidiaries may appear as full or partial owners of any of the projects / companies listed. Recently, Finance Group Limited increased its share capital from 500,000 to 700,000 euros.

Trine

Trine is one of the latest additions to my portfolio (August). It’s probably one of the most original and exciting platform to invest in. It allows people to invest in solar energy in growing markets, i.e. the developing world. This allows you to earn a profit while making social and environmental impact. Trine partners with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Swedish International Cooperation Agency (SIDA), which, to my eyes, adds much credibility to their proposal. Indeed, Trine, through its partnership with UNDP contribute towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7- affordable and clean energy, and improve the quality of life in rural communities. Read more here.

Basically, you choose a loan to invest in, or set up Monthly Investments. Each loan is a bit different in terms of impact, location, size and risk. You decide how much to invest from €25 minimum. When the loan is fully funded, your money is transfered to the borrower, i.e. solar partners, who sell and distribute solar products to their customers. If the solar partner succeeds to repay the loan you’ll get back your investment with interest. You can expect repayments approximately every three months. A big plus is that some loans are partly covered by Investment Protection in case it fails (provided by SIDA). So far, Trine has funded projects in 14 countries.

So far, I have invested in 16 projects Guatemala, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria, with interests of up to 8% (which can be more when you invest more than 1000 EUR). While the interests are not so high compared to others platforms, at least for me, that is compensated by the good feeling of investing my money in a good cause, while reducing my carbon footprint. In my case, my footprint will be 37.6 tons of CO2 less once the projects are operational. So far, I have reduced 0.4 tons of CO2 and I have reached a 4.6% XIRR.

Trine informed in March that the loan to Solynta is having some problems in their business (since they are in the process of raising funds) that translated in the repayment due on February to be extended until the beginning of March.

Trine in numbers (December): In 2019, Trine funded €17m (more than in the entire history of Trine combined); 35 loans in 11 different countries were fully funded; 1.2 million people got access to clean electricity; More than half a million tons of CO2 is expected to be reduced over time; €5.4 million was repaid; 2 loans defaulted, resulting in a €400,000 loss to investors; More than 2,500 new people became Trine investors, resulting in over 10 000 investors in total; Trine’s CEO received an Honorary award from the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustav himself.

If interested, you will receive a discount of EUR 10 on your first investment when registering through this LINK.

Wisefund

Wisefund is a platform similar to Monethera, TFGcrowd and Crowdestor in terms of performance and profitability. It started to operate in 2019 in Estonia. They market projects with very attractive returns (17.3-19.7%), some in more than one tier, 4-10 months and Buyback. The platform repurchases its projects with a penalty, although they have temporarily suspended to avoid massive withdrawal of funds by investors. Wisefund is one of the platforms under the magnifying glass of investors due to its profile, so similar to Kuetzal and Envestio.

Since August, I have already invested in 13 projects (1 already finalized). The payments are timely. Although it is still early, Wisefund has become my platform with better returns by far: 20.9% (¡). Even so, I will be prudent and will not increase my positions in the coming months, until it becomes clear that Wisefund is a professional and solvent platform.

In March, Wisefund released its Secondary Market. Currently, it will allow to sell loans only at a lower price than the loan value, although the intention is to change this later on.

Register with thisLINK and you will receive 0.5% of the amount invested during the first 180 days.

P2P Crowdlending:

Bondora

In October, I started investing in Bondora. It has taken me several years to decide it, but in the end I decided to try the most senior of P2P platforms. It is possibly one of the most controversial platforms, with vehement detractors and defenders. I understand that by investing time in analyzing the platform’s numbers, you can achieve really attractive returns, above 20%. For now, I’m going to focus on Go&Grow. I think it is a very attractive option to obtain a fixed return of 6.76% and absolute liquidity. My idea is to use Go&Grow for those funds that I need to have quickly available for contingencies or investment opportunities.

In fact, in January I withdrew all my funds (without any problem) for some payments, so my account dropped to zero. The XIRR obtained so far has been 8.6% (annualized) thanks partly to the promotion when opening an account. My intention is to continue using Go&Grow for getting some profitability while keeping quick accessibility to the funds. I keep a minimum (250 EUR) for to be able to continue testing its performance.

When registering with this LINK you will get 5 EUR.

Bondster

In October, I started investing in Bondster, a P2P platform established in 2017 and based in Prague, Czech Republic. Bondster connects retail investors looking for alternative investments and microfinance institutions searching for flexible funding through an online marketplace. Bondster is the first marketplace of its kind in the Czech Republic that cooperates with microfinance institutions from all over the world. It has over 7,000 investors and 15 loan originators. The average annual return for investors has recently increased and amounted to 12,5 % on Euro short term investments and 8,5 % on Czech investments (most of them being secured by real estate). Bondster offers various diversification possibilities. You can invest into loans of different maturity, country of origin, type of loan, size and collateral. You can also benefit from a user-friendly autoinvest tool with various filters and diversification settings. Majority of loans are offered with a buyback guarantee that will be activated in case the borrower is past-due with the scheduled repayment for 30 or 60 days (you will also earn interest during this period). Bondster is the first platform to introduce the so called Smart Reserve that is a great option for those who want to invest for a short period of time with a possibility to exit from the investment any time and for free without a necessity of selling loan in the secondary market.

I had the great fortune that on November 21, Bondster announced new Stikcredit loans with a juicy 14% annual right the day after my transfer of new funds. Bondster calculates that I will get an IRR of around 13.6% (12.4% in February).

In January, the Polish provider Ascot Finance joined Bondster. Established in 2016, Ascot Finance focuses on secured business loans with an interest rate of 7,5 % p.a. and buyback guarantee. More here. There is a cashback promotion of 1% to all those who invest at least EUR 250 in loans from Ascot Finance until 16 March.

Bondster almost tripled the volume of loans in 2019. At the end of the year, there were a total of 8417 investors who had invested more than 33.6 million euros, the fastest growth of the platform in the last three years.

When registering with this LINKyou will get 1% from the increase of the volume of investments within the first 90 days since registration. The bonus will be calculated and paid out afer 30, 60 and 90 days.

Dofinance

In DoFinance, the maximum return rate offered is 11% for minimum six months. VIP Dofinance investors can get up to 12% (1% extra) during the first 90 days (10% VIP status) using my promotional LINK .

DoFinance may not be the platform with the highest return rates, but it represents the maximum of simplicity to operate. Once the objective return rate and the term have been chosen, there is nothing left to do other than wait for the interests to arrive. In addition, monthly returns have followed an upward trend that started in January and, since October, they exceed 11% (11.1% XIRR).

In February, the SIA Alfa Finance management has prepared unaudited financial reports for the period between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019. Alfa Finance SIA is a parent company of DoFinance SIA and Alfa Finance Sp.z o.o. which is issuing unsecured consumer loans in Poland with the TaniKredyt.pl brand (more here).

Like many other platforms, DoFinance has issued a statement the Envestio and Kuetzal collapsesexplaining why their platform is secure, anc covering the following topics: Development of secure business model; How buy-back guarantee is secured; Who founded DoFinance; and Verification of DoFinance Investors. Read more here.

Dofinance’s investors network has grown from 3473 to 4654 during 2019. In 2020, they are planning to launch new projects in Asia.

You can read Dofinance’s technical sheet here. Register with this LINK and you will receive an extra 1% return during the first 90 days (VIP status).

Fast Invest

Fast Invest yields are maintained with astonishing regularity, between 13 and 14%.

In February, FastInvest announced a new (Polish) loan originator: CAPITAL SERVICE SA. These loans will be available with up to 10-12% interest rate and will be secured by 3 guarantees: 1) BuyBack Guarantee (60 days): If the borrower will delay the payment by 60 days, the loan originators will buy back the whole outstanding principal amount and repay all of the accrued interest; 2) Repayment Guarantee (7 days): This is a new guarantee if the borrower is late on the scheduled payment by 7 days, the lender covers the late principal and the interest amount; and 3) All loans will be covered with the MoneyBack Guarantee – if you decide to terminate the loan agreement prematurely, you will receive the full principal back in a day.

Having a new known originator (and there are already three along with eCommerce and Kvivku), helps to improve the transparency of the platform and the confidence of investors, taking into account that the biggest reason for criticism of the platform has been precisely the absence of information about their originators. There are many detractors, but for my part, I have decided to continue to trust Fast Invest.

Also in February, Fast Invest has announced that the platform is available in a new language: Portuguese.

Fast Invest in figures (March): 61.24% of the investors earned 12% or more interest rates and 100% of investors They made a profit. 41,000 registered users, the top 5 countries investors (Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain), 70,000 million published and 55.8 million euros invested.

You can read Fast Invest’s technical sheethere.

Fellow Finance

Very disappointing result. Interest rates are really attractive (up to 55%!), but with no Buyback. My strategy was to invest only in loans with interest rates above 48% and always the minimal amount, which in the case of Fellow Finance is 25 euros. It is a complex platform and the customer service is not particularly good, so I still have many doubts about how the platform works precisely. At the end, too many defaults that don’t get compensated with the higher returns offered. In fact, I’ve ended up with really negative returns (-17.5% XIRR). I must say that there are other less risky loans, which surely would have resulted in a better performance than my (so far) failed investment strategy.

For almost one year (May 2019), I no longer invest in new loans with the idea of eventually leave Fellow Finance. Since July, I’ve started withdrawing funds. I will still have to wait until early 2022 to completely empty my account.

You can read Fellow Finance’s technical sheet here.

Finbee

Although the yields obtained with FinBee at the moment they are excellent (an IRR of 15.4% selecting only loans above 18%), being a platform without Buyback, I’m still aware of how the platform evolves in the medium to long term once the (numerous) defaults. Delayed loans (0-90 days) and defaults (> 90 days), in continuous rise, already represent 21.8% and 15.4% of my portfolio, respectively.

The default loan recovery rates are 56.15% as of 2016 and 40.25% as of 2017. The collection process is not over, so these indicators should continue to improve in the future. However, for investments after March 2019, FinBee has announced that it will compensate for 30% of the loans in default. Making a quick calculation, this means that the profitability, once the defaults begin to be accounted for, will be reduced well below what currently offered by Buyback platforms (up to 7-8%?), So since June 2019, I have stopped reinvesting benefits and have started to withdraw them from the platform.

In February, FinBee announced that they became profitable last year and saw 33% growth in loan portfolio value. FinBee issued individuals and legal entities almost 11 million euros last year, a 33% growth over 2018. The number of loans issued to businesses grew 46%. More than 3,500 loans were used, with 357 of these being to businesses. The joint sum of loans issued to businesses reached almost 3.4 million euros – 67% more than in 2018. 90% more company applications for loans were received than in 2018. From the start of its operations, FinBee has issued individuals and businesses 29 million euros in loans. The platform has more than 50 thousand registered users, of whom almost 9 thousand actively invested or borrowed last year.

You can read Finbee’s technical sheet here.

rupeer

Grupeer

Grupeeris one of my favorite platforms, with monthly returns always between 13 and 15%.

In December, Grupeer announced that monthly investments have increased three-fold during the past year and the number of clients increased from almost 4,000 to over 22,000. The long-awaited secondary market and some additional products are still to be launched.

And in February, Grupeer celebrated his 3rd birthday: between February 11 and 26, the Loan originators increased the interest rate offered to 14%.

Grupeer announced also in February the launch of two-step authentication, which is available from February 27.

In March, Grupeer released portfolio statistics for investors, which include data detailed on historical and current investments in numbers and graphs, for example, principal received, loan expiration dates or rates of interest. These are downloadable.

You can read Grupeer’s technical sheet here. When registering, if you use thisLINK, there is a 1% refund

LenderMarket

LenderMarket It is an established Irish company in June 2019. They offer personal loans in EUR issued in Poland, Spain, Finland, Estonia, Denmark and the Czech Republic at a rate of 12% interest for up to 90 days and with a buy-back guarantee that begins when they are 60 days late (plus accrued interest income and late payment charges). Payments are made monthly. LenderMarket is a sister company of Creditstar Group AS, founded in 2006. Creditstar may sound familiar to many of you, as it is one of the creators of Mintos, with a B rating for Mintos and a score of 79/100 in Explore P2P. The third best of all the creators of Mintos. This was For me an excellent indicator of confidence.

Basing on those excellent credentials, I started investing on December 11 and made another deposit on 17 for a total of 5000 EUR. The funds were quickly invested with the AutiInvest. It is still too early to inform you about benefits generated, but at least what is the operation of the platform so far has been really fluid, intuitive and simple, without any need to follow up, so I’m optimistic with LenderMarket. I have already achieved an IRR of 11.0%.

With thisLINK, you will receive a bonus of 1% of net deposited funds for the first 60 days. You will receive this amount 5 days after the 60-day period.

Mintos

Comment that I invest mainly manually, both the in the primary and secondary markets. Partly because it seems to me that the AutoInvest tool doesn’t work too well… I don’t use Invest & Access either.

When presenting my results, Mintos it’s more complicated since I invest in Five different currencies: Euro, British Pound (GBP), Kazakh Tenge (KAZ), Rubles Russians (RUB) and Mexican pesos (MXN). The graph shows the results in black combined from the platform (converting each currency to EUR according to the type of change each month). The monthly profitability is very susceptible to variations in exchange rates.

The Maximum returns offered by loans in EUR fluctuate widely throughout the year, adjusting the originators to what the competition offers. Since January are again at their maximum, with maximum returns in February of up to 17%. One way to obtain a plus of profitability is to be attentive to punctual offers and modify the investment strategy based on the same.

During December and until January 10, Finko and Sun Finance offered a holiday return campaign that consisted of a 0.5% refund of all loans. An excellent opportunity for get an additional return by investing in loans with zero or only a couple of days left, allowing you to reinvest the same funds several times within of the promotional period. The efforts compensated with a peak of profitability in January (17.6%).

In February, Mintos announced that Dinero and Ukrpozyka, the two Ukrainian loan originators within the Finko group will offer a cashback 0.5% when investing in your loans in EUR in the primary market until 23 February As with the latest offer from Finko and Sun Finance, I will try make the most of the promotion by investing in really short loans (0-2 days) to recover the capital within the promotion period, and thus be able to reinvest the same cash again (hopefully 2 or 3 cycles). And another offer with a 1% cashback for Wowwo (until February 29).

As for my loans in other currencies, the best IRR (at the moment) are my investments in you have Kazakhs and Russian rubles (17.4% -18.7%). In January, my investments in currency other than the euro has suffered, for the downturns in the ruble (-4.0%), Mexican peso (-4.0%) and sterling (-2.4%). Only the Kazakh tenge (-0.1%) It has remained against the euro.

Interests offered by loans in Tenges (KAZ) and rubles (RUB) range quite a bit from 16 to 20%. There is usually always available in both the primary market and in the secondary.

With the pounds Sterling (GBP), there are no new loans since September, so the Cash Drag is already a problem. I reach 10% in December, I converted to EUR but It is increasing again. I have started to invest in loans with Premium of up to -0.5% to not have the funds without doing anything.

The loans in Georgian lari (GEL) they were scarce lately both in the primary market as in the secondary, but 2-3 times a month they appeared new, bringing the Cash Drag problem was not too important. Unfortunately, to Early January, there was a 90% repurchase of my loans early GEL. From Mintos they inform me that there will be no new GEL loans available at The market in the near future. In addition, it is no longer possible to deposit GEL. So My experience with GEL is over. The result has been really positive: An IRR of 15.5% taking into account both the GEL-EUR fluctuations and the commissions for currency exchange.

Originators

Good news in February. Mintos announced they’ve worked out an agreement with Aforti Finance that establishes a payment schedule. Aforti Finance will make daily payments of no less than EUR 150 000 per month, starting from February. The payments will be directed to cover the older debt first. It is expected that that investors will start receiving funds at the end of March 2020 and all accumulated debt towards investors should be cleared by February 2021. In my case, I don’t have any loans with Aforti in Mintos (only in Viainvest). More here.

On 6 December, the Central Bank of Kosovo revoked the licences IuteCredit and Monego . Mintos has suspended the loans in the primary and secondary markets. Iutecredit continued to pay Loans on time. Monego is being a bit more problematic. A third entity (Finitera) has committed to cover payments to investors once borrower payments are delayed by 60 days (Read more here). In my case, the amount invested in Monego has gradually decreased from 754 EUR when Mintos suspended operations in the secondary market at EUR 263 on February 27, With some loans more than 60 days late.

In March, more problems with Mintos originators: Peachy, a UK originator (and the business name of a company Cash On Go Limited), decided to suspend business operations. Will begin a sustainable closure of the company, managed by Smith & amp; Williamson LLP. Mintos has already started work to hire a legal advisor in the United Kingdom, which means that investors do not have to take any individually measured Mintos investors are priority creditors and Your claims must be satisfied in full. Payments to investors in Minutes will be regular, without a significant difference with payments while The company was fully operational. Therefore, it is expected that Minutes investors continue to receive payments without waiting for the final stage of the liquidation process. In light of the possible settlement, Peachy has taken previous steps to facilitate safe change and declined gradually the amount of investment pending for investors in Mintos, from EUR 6 829 112 earlier this year to EUR 1 655 173. The rating of Minutes for Peachy will be changed from B to C and Peachy will be removed from Marketplaces once the settlement is completed.

Investments in loans issued by Ukrpozyka and Dinero – listed as Finko Ukraine on Mintos – have now a parent company guarantee. This is an additional risk mitigation factor: if a loan originating company cannot fulfil its contractual agreements towards an investor on Mintos, the parent company of that loan originator has to step in and meet the loan originating company’s obligations towards the investors.

New originators in March:

• Swiss Capital KZ offers to invest in loans for cars issued in Kazakhstan: expected annual yields of up to 11.5%; Loans: 1000 – 15000 euros; Average loan amount: 5000 euros; Loan terms: 3 to 12 months; Skin in the game: 10%; Buyback; Minutes Rating: B.
• Kiva is a new Russian loan originator offering short-term loans for investments in euros. Kiva loans will be included in Mintos under the name of Finko Russia: Expected annual net profitability: up to 13%; Loans: 43 EUR to 430 EUR; Average loan amount: EUR 110; Loan terms: 16-30 days; Skin-in-the-game: 10%; Minutes Rating: C +.
• DanaRupiah se It is among the top 5 financial technology companies in providing fast and secure financial solutions to more than 500,000 clients in Indonesia: net annual returns of up to 13%; Buyback guarantee; 10% skin-in-the-game; Loans listed in EUR with an average amount of € 133 loan; Minutes Rating: B-.
• Currency, the first Issuer of loans from the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a company of microcredit that offers to invest in loans in euros with interest rates of up to 16%; Loans: 25-200 euros; Average loan amount: 129 euros; Loan terms: up to 30 days; Skin-in-the-game: 10%; Minutes Rating: C +.
• Kredit Paint launches Loans from the Philippines.
• Brands originating from loans Kredo and Tigo join under a single loan company alternative, Finitera.
• Capitalia expands its offer commercial loans backed by auto stocks in the market.
• Two brands: Banknote and Vizia have been placed under the umbrella brand DelfinGroup.

New originators in February:

• TASCREDIT a secured car loan lender from Kazakhstan offering loans in euro and Kazakhstani tenge (KZT), with a B- Mintos Rating, expected annual returns of up to 11% (loans in EUR) and up to 17% (loans in KZT); Loan amounts: EUR 150 – 74 000; Loan terms: 12-24 months; Skin-in-the-game: 10%; and Buyback guarantee.
• GFM is a micro-loan lender in Kazakhstan offering net returns of up to 18% for Kazakhstani Tenge (KZT) and up to 9% for EUR annually; Average loan amount of KZT 180,000 (EUR 426); Average term of 6 months; Skin in the game of 10%; Mintos Rating: B-; and Buyback guarantee.
• JULO offers instalment loans listed in EUR with expected annual returns of up to 12.5%; Loan amounts: EUR 90 – 515; Average loan amount: EUR 215; Loan terms: 14 – 180 days; Skin-in-the-game: 10%; Mintos Rating: B-; and Buyback guarantee.
• Pinjam Yuk, the fourth originator from Indonesia, was established in 2017, and is a part of a group company headquartered in Beijing, China, which has crossed EUR 27 billion in total transaction volume and grown the team to over 1000 employees across China, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Loans’ characteriastics: Expected annual returns of up to 13%; Loan amounts: EUR 18 – 13; Average loan amount: EUR 90; Loan terms: 30 days; Skin-in-the-game: 10%; Mintos Rating: B-
• AgroCredit offers Agricultural loans with an interest rate of 6%.

New originators in January:

• Mikro Leasing (part of Mikro Kapital, which offered already loans in Russia, Moldova and Romania) offers Belarus-issued business and car loans listed in EUR and RUB with expected returns of up to 10% (loans in €) and up to 16% (loans in RUB). Other characteristics: Mintos Rating B+; Loans with average amount of EUR 11 000; Loans with an average maturity of 30 months; Buyback guarantee; Skin in the game of 10%.
• Mogo, one of the Europe’s largest used car financing companies, extends lsu offer adding loans at a higher interest rate without guarantee of repurchase (Buyback) and introducing risk categories.

Other news

In February, Mintos announced the launch of the first version of the Mintos mobile application, after receiving comments from Hundreds of beta testers. Some statistics on the launch of the application: 1) 37,015 downloads in the first 2 days; Free sessions of failures in 100% of cases; and 3) 4.6 / 5 average rating of 349 reviews. This first version is mainly for monitoring the investments. More features will be added in the next update.

From February, the calculations of the net annualized return (NAR) displayed in the overview page will include all other earnings an investor makes with Mintos, e.g. bonuses from Refer a Friend program, cashback campaign bonuses, earnings from affiliate programs, bonuses from activation campaigns, etc.

Since February, Mintos is also available in Dutch.

Mintos in figures (February 2020): 5,040 million euros in investments (the largest market for investments in loans from Europe); 276,000 investors. In 2019, Mintos tripled his team of 60 to 180 members in just 12 months. More information about the growth of Mintos in 2019 in its annual review.

You can read Mintos’ technical sheet here. When registering, if you use thisLINK you’ll get 0.5% of the amount invested over the first three months.

NEO Finance

After about disastrous months, things are gradually improving in NEO Finance as can be deduced from the graph. The high number of defaults caused really negative returns from May to September 2019. Although a recovery has begun, the XIRR in February It remains only marginally positive (0.8%).

My investment strategy has been so far to invest only in loans from the primary market 17% (and up to 27%) and no provision fund. Too many delayed loans that end up unpaid (after 90 days) and from which only a variable part is recovered that is usually around 30-50% depending on the return on the loan. The last few weeks of June I stopped reinvesting the profits. And since July, I’ve decided to try a new strategy using the provision fund (which is basically like paying for a buyback guarantee – Buyback). This provision fund must be paid in advance, when making the investment, which means starting with losses.

In February, my Loans with a provision fund have increased to 30% (27% in January). A clear recovery in profitability begins to be seen.

And since October of 2019, I have stopped using the repurchase option for unpaid loans After 90 days and trust the recovery procedure of NEO Finance. According to its statistics, after 24 months, the lender will recover 53.6% and 73.8% after 33 months (statistics on slide 11 of the report). So, in theory, with some patience, it should work better than the 90-day buyback option. Looks like I won’t be able to let you know if it works better as a strategy until two years time.

By registering with thisLINK, you will receive 25 EUR when opening an account.

Peerberry

Without offering spectacular returns, Peerberry makes up for it with astonishing regularity, minimal follow-up and zero Cash DragI intend to keep my position as long as everything stays like this.

In January, Aventus Group’s Autofinance (BY) company joined PeerBerry offering lease loans of up to 13% annual repayment and repurchase guarantee. Autofinance (BY) is an auto leasing company launched in Belarus in June 2019. Find out more at https://autofinance.by/.

Peerberry has started to share business reviews on their originators, starting with Lithome, which offers 5% of the loans offered by the platform, and Gofingo.

PeerBerry in figures: In February, Peerberry managed a loan volume of 19.5 million (for a total of 232 million; what makes them the second platform in continental Europe in terms of loans financed) and exceeded 19,400 investors from 64 countries that can invest in loans from 18 originators in 8 countries.

You can read the PeerBerry data sheet here.

Robocash

In Robo.cash profitability, which had increased since April 2019 with the payment of interest on longer-term loans (180-365 days, which are charged at the end – bullet payment), has come back down from again since January, when I was forced to invest again in loans to more six months (from Singapore) for the serious problems of Cash Drag. To have in account that (for bullet payments) the rate of return does not reflect the real profitability of the platform (which should be 12.0% in my case).

In March, Robo.cash reported that, due to recent changes in the legislation of Kazakhstan with respect to microfinance activity, the operations of the originator of the LLP Z-Finance loan. Henceforth, LLP MFI Tez Finance (an authorized microfinance institution registered in The National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan) will provide the services of Loan in the country. Since 2015, the group has issued 117 million euros of loans and has served 785,000 clients in Kazakhstan. Your main product are PDL loans of up to 330 euros with a maturity term of up to 45 days The conditions for investors remain the same. Everybody Loans will be quoted in EUR and guaranteed with a guarantee of 100% repayment of the lender. The expected annual net return for Investors will be up to 12%. All current loans issued by LLP Z Finance will be taken care of until they close.

Robocash in figures: It’s been 3 years since Robo.cash started working. During this time, they have integrated new loan originators from Russia, Vietnam and Singapore (in addition to Spain and Kazakhstan at the time of launch). Today, Robo.cash en: 10,000 investors, 1.5 million loans financed by one volume total of 147 million euros and 5 loan originators.

You can read Robocash’ technical sheet here.

Swaper

In Swaper, profitability remains excellent (14.0% IRR) despite Cash Drag, which has moderated quite a bit during February (3-6%).

It’s been 3 years since launching of Swaper (October 2016). Swaper in figures (November): Cumulative volume of loans = 91,9 million; Number of active investors = 3,360.

As long as the investor’s account remains above EUR 5,000, Swaper increases profitability by 2%.

You can read Swaper’s technical sheet here.

Twino

I started investing in Twino somewhat reluctantly in November 2018, in view of the negative comments about Cash Drag and low returns. One year later, Twino has become one of my most profitable platforms (14.7%), thanks partly to the positive fluctuations of my investments in rubles.

In February, precisely these fluctuations (EUR-RUB) that had recently played in my favour, have turned my February profitability to a poor 1.6% (annualized).

News of February:

– Investments in guaranteed real estate projects, which will be called TWINO Ventures, will be offered soon.

– Authentication two-factor (2FA) for greater account security (intended for February).

– Sponsorship of Latvia’s emerging technology scene, specifically the conference TechChill You can use a 20% discount code: techchillxtwino20, when buying Your entrance here.

– Launching of consumer credit operations in Vietnam in association with VIA SMS Group Twino has entered into a joint venture with 50% of the business.

Twino in figures (to February 1): 1) Loans funded in the last month: € 15,401,608; 2) Average interest: 10.72%; 3) € 632 million total funded; 4) XIRR to date: 10.59%; and 5) 19,825 investors.

Viainvest

Viainvest is a platform with excellent regularity, no Cash Drag, it requires a minimum follow-up and with return rates around 12-13% since January 2019. Unlike most other platforms Viainvest withhold taxes. I present tax-free results to facilitate comparison.

Vianinvest in figures (December 2019): 179 million financed, 14,019 registered investors You can read the technical sheet of Viainvest here.

Viventor

Viventor is a platform with excellent regularity, no Cash Drag, which requires minimal monitoring and with clear rising monthly returns since January 2019, despite Aforti’s setback. The january profitability decline (8.9%), has more than been offset in February (18.6%, the highest monthly return since I started investing with Viventor).

In February, Aforti Finance and Aforti Factor announced they will resume transferring borrower repayments to ViVentor for distribution among investors. The oldest unpaid investments will be covered first. Aforti Factor will start making payments from the end of February to ViVentor. Payments have been divided into 5 equal monthly parts. The repayments to investors will start from 29 May. Aforti Finance will start making payments from the end of July and will be divided into 31 equal monthly parts. Repayments to investors won’t start until 30 October. All in all it’s good news, although the repayment process will take forever. At least, I understand that interest on delayed payments will also be paid. In view of the situation, when Mintos anounced their deal with Aforti, I decided to gamble a bit and invest a couple of hundreds in Aforti loans with a 30+% disccount in the secondary market. Lets wait and see…

In February, Viventor announced its first Loan Originator from Moldova. Forza.MD will offer up to 12,5% short term consumer loans issued by Credits 2 All SRL, with maturities from 7 days to 1 month, and loan amounts of EUR 50 to EUR 500.

Viventor was established in 2016. During the three-year period (as of February 2020), the platform has refinanced more than EUR 105 million worth loans, while accumulated paid interest to investors reached over EUR 1.3 million. Average return is 13.2%. ViVentor has 7,500 registered investors and its current portfolio exceeds EUR 15.5 million. ViVentor has increased its’ financial capital from EUR 2,800 to EUR 1,300,000. As a result of the significant growth of the platform, Viventor’s revenue more than tripled from EUR 0.1 million in 2018 to EUR 0.31 million in 2019. The total loans funded on the platform in 2019 was over EUR 53.5 million. Out of these loans, more than 71% were consumer loans, 18% invoice financing and around 8% business loans.

You can read Viventor’s technical sheet here. Invest with this LINKand Viventor will reward us both with 1% cashback of the amount invested during the first 30 days, which should be at the least 100 EUR (promotion valid until 29 February).

Other Fintech tools:

Sun Exchange

Sun Exchange is the world’s first peer-to-peer solar leasing platform. Through Sun Exchange, anyone, anywhere in the world, can own solar energy-producing cells and build wealth by leasing those cells to power businesses and organisations in South Africa, with installations and maintenance taken care of.

Sun Exchange was established in 2014 through $35k crowd-funding campaign and completed its first project in March 2016. As of today, they have funded 21 projects (schools, supermarkets, malls…). I’ve invested in 80 cells in 4 of them. Sun Exchange has investors in 150+ countries, and has generated 1,500,000 Kwh to date through 590,000 cells. In the future, they’re planning to launch a secondary marketplace for trading operating solar cells.

The way it works is as follows. Sun Exchange identifies or is approached by a business or organisation that wants to go solar. Projects undergoing evaluation are listed as “Coming Soon”. Once accepted, the crowdsale of the solar cells starts through the marketplace and any individual or organisation, anywhere in the world, can purchase these solar cells for as little as ZAR 50 / USD 4 per cell, which are then leased to the project. Once all solar cells sell out (and they go quick!), the chosen local construction partner installs the solar cells and the rest of the solar equipment. This process typically takes 4-6 weeks, but can be longer for larger projects. The lease starts when the project goes live. The business or organisation pays to consume the electricity your cells produce. You automatically receive this as lease rental payments net of insurance and servicing fees on a monthly basis, over around 20 years, paid optionally in local currency or Bitcoin (BTC) into your online Sun Exchange wallet.

What to expect? You should expect a return of around 11% over 20 years. At the end of the 20 years, you remain the owner of the solar cells. Sun Exchange may arrange a sale of the cells to the consumer or a 3rd party on your behalf or renegotiate an extended lease agreement. An example of how it works, using the figures from the last project I invested in):

• Cost per cell (ZAR): 86.00 – I’m investing the equivalent of 100 EUR per project.
• Forecast first year production / cell (kWh): 7.51
• Year 1 lease rate (ZAR / kWh): 1.20
• Lease term (Years): 20
• Estimated 20 year rental income per cell (ZAR): 270.44
• Estimated IRR (%): 11.81.

Of course, you have to take into account the currency fluctuations ZAR:EUR. However, looks like at least for the last few years, it’s remained relatively stable.

In short, for me, Sun Exchange, despite fluctuations in currency exchange, possible political instability, which is such a long-term investment (although there is a secondary market around the corner), etc. offers a number of really attractive points. On the one hand, the sun is unlikely to stop shining in South Africa, but most importantly it allows me to invest in renewable energy. The latter is crucial for me and fits perfectly with my goal of investing more and more in sustainable, ecological and/or solidarity projects. I firmly believe in my responsibility to reduce my carbon footprint. If I can do that and get a profitability at the same time … what more can you ask for?

I’ve already invested in five projects. In February, Sun Exchange released its largest solar project to date.

Whiskey Invest Direct

WhiskyInvestDirect, a very novel platform that allows investment in Scotch whisky in the process of maturation. I started investing in March and have made two contributions with which I have invested in thirteen different whiskeys. At the moment I am quite satisfied, with a TIR of 4.4%.

In February there has been an unexplained slump (such as May 2019). Let’s hope things get back to normal in the next few months.

To convert from Euro to British Pound (GBP) and make a transfer to a British account, I use my account at Revolut.

Register with thisLINK and you will receive 1 liter of pure alcohol (1 LPA) and 2 pounds (GBP).

Indexa

Still really satisfied with Indexa. My investments are at the fifth level of risk (5 of 10) are performing really great so far.

In December, Indexa turned 4 years old. The volume managed has multiplied by 2.3 this year, from 135 million EUR (12/15/2018) to over 312 m (12/15/2019), and more than 13,600 customers. In addition, Indexa has its own Skin in the game: between partners and Indexa team they have invested over 13 million Euro, 4% of the total money managed. More here, although only available in Spanish.

Indexa is the first profitable automated manager in Europe (and perhaps the world) and will lower the management fee from 0.45% to 0.43% for fund accounts from 10 to 100 thousand euros from January. In addition, Vanguard, the manager of most of the funds included in Indexa’s portfolios, has again lowered its fund commissions. The average cost of funds in The Index portfolios low -0.04% (from 0.19% on average to 0.15%), which equates to 85 thousand euros of annual savings for Indexa customers.

In February, Rankia users gave Indexa the award for the best automated manager in Spain, as every year since the category existed. Moreover, they continue to grow, and since January they have the most stock pension plan in January in Spain.

You’ll get € 10,000 free of management fees for 1 year by contributing more than € 1,000 to the fund portfolio or more than € 50 to the pension or EPSV account when registering with thisLINK.

Online banking

Besides, I use N26 and Revolut for my transfers. The two online banks do not charge fees for making transfers, minimum fees for payments in foreign currency, and allow you to open an account in a matter of minutes. Also Transferwise.

Evolution of my positions

As for the evolution of my positions since January 2018 depending on the type of investment, they’ve remained more or less constant until August, when I sold my most important investment fund for the purchase of an apartment.

And the evolution of my income from crowd investments (thanks to Eelis, the Wealthy Finn!) compared to other bloggers: